Riding lawn mower

Abstract

A riding lawn mower comprises, a plurality of front wheels and a plurality of rear wheels; a vehicle body supported by the front wheels and the rear wheels, and supporting a driver's seat; an engine disposed in a rear position of the vehicle body; a hood housing the engine; a mower unit suspendible from the vehicle body; and a grass catcher for collecting grass clippings from the mower unit. The grass catcher includes a left side container portion; a right side container portion; and a center container portion communicating with the left and right side container portions in upper positions of the left and right side container portions, and having a planar bottom. When the grass catcher is in a collecting position, the bottom of the center container portion is located above and along the hood, and at least lower part of each of the left side container portion and the right side container portion is located laterally of the hood, the center container portion, the left side container portion and the right side container portion defining a recessed space extending over an entire fore and aft length thereof for accommodating at least part of the hood.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001]This invention relates to a riding lawn mower with a motor section having an engine mounted on a rear portion of a vehicle body, and a grass catcher for collecting grass clippings from a mower unit.[0002]A conventional riding lawn mower of the type noted above, as shown in Japanese Patent Application “Kokai” No. 2002-101725 (Patent Document 1) (paragraph [0009], FIG. 1), has a grass catcher 8 disposed above an engine hood 5. Another example of such lawn mower has a grass catcher disposed at the rear end of a body frame as shown in Japanese Utility Model Registration No. 2568257 (Patent Document 2) (paragraph [0012], FIG. 1).[0003]With the grass catcher located according to the technique shown in Patent Document 1, an increase in the capacity of the grass catcher will result in an increased height of the grass catcher, tending to hamper rearward visibility from the driving platform. Besides, the weight of the grass catcher and grass clippings collecte...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0005]The object of this invention is to provide a riding lawn mower in which a sufficient capacity of a grass catcher is secured while maintaining rearward visibility with lower height of gravitational center, and smaller longitudinal dimension.

[0017]That is, the grass catcher has a recess for accommodating at least part of the hood. This construction helps alleviate the shortcomings encountered in the prior art.

Problems solved by technology

With the grass catcher located according to the technique shown in Patent Document 1, an increase in the capacity of the grass catcher will result in an increased height of the grass catcher, tending to hamper rearward visibility from the driving platform.

Besides, the weight of the grass catcher and grass clippings collected therein tends to raise the height of gravitational center of the entire lawn mower.

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